Identify the sustainable level of local plans and urban sectors. Proposal for an operational procedure

The city is the man-made structure with the largest consumption of energy. To achieve more sustainable levels of resource's use and to reduce its environmental impact, it needs to transform its way of working. For this purpose, it is necessary to act on the urban structure by ensuring that the resources necessary for its running, and for the same functional level, are less and less. To achieve the outcome we can act on the existing urban structure, improving the functioning, or on that to be planned ones, if an action of urban transformation is expected. In the latter case, it is necessary to build a plan containing elements of sustainability that, once implemented, will enable the direct achievement of the default aims. The paper wants to deepen the measurement of the effects of plans aiming to create urban areas with neutral consumption or Near Zero Neighborhoods (NZN). It is appropriate, in this regard, to define the most appropriate planning level to apply these innovative procedures. Even if the spatial dimension to be used may vary from case to case, it is possible to assume the neighbourhood/urban sector scale as the best scale, thanks to its basic features, namely the limited extension and the immediate possibility to transform the indications of plan in physical and functional elements.